Tārā as the guiding star: the menstrual cycle
This week’s Mahāvidyā, is Tārā. She is the great wisdom goddess, whose name literally means ‘star’. She is the protectress of navigation and earthly travel, as well as spiritual travel along the path to evolution, and fulfilment and enlightenment, offering the liberating grace of divine transcendence.
In this way, Tārā is a beautifully light-fuelled reminder of the ultimate direction and meaning of all our lives, as we are each our own embodied star, containing within us the wisdom to know the direction of our path, and of our time here on Planet Earth, a beacon upon ourselves
In the Buddhist tradition, there are a number of different forms of Tārā although her most recognised quality is that of beneficence and compassion. She is by far the most popular and greatest deity within Tibetan tantric Buddhism, worshipped throughout Nepal, Tibet and South-East Asia, and recognised as the ‘mother’, related to the very earliest worship of our Mother God.
However from a Hindu Tantric perspective, Tārā has a fierceness and capacity for violence which is similar to Kālī. She is one of the ten Mahāvidyās, which translates into English as one of the great revelations or manifestation. In Tantrism, there is the idea that the Divine Feminine is the supreme cosmic force in the universe equivalent to Brahman.
An important aspect from the Mahāvidyā perspective is that Devi or the Great Goddess, has a tendency to manifest herself in a variety of forms so as to protect cosmic stability. The ten Mahāvidyās represent a common way of expressing the idea that goddesses can take many different forms.
The common theme underpinning all this, is a recognition that our perceived world of dualities – male/female, pure/impure, sun/moon, good/evil, microcosm/macrocosm etc is a false one. For seekers, to know true reality is to reach a state of being where all opposites unite.
As you may know from an earlier blog post, Kālī personifies the highest reality and ultimate truth. Blue as the sky, and equally all encompassing, to the seeker, the terrible Kālī is also the benevolent mother, the destroyer of false notions and beliefs and the primordial power that moves the universe. All the other deities arise and dissolve in her.
Among the other mahāvidyās, none is as close to Kālī in spirit and appearance as Tārā. Second only in importance to Kālī in her importance, but like Kālī she carries deadly weapons and stands triumphantly upon the dead body of Śiva. As Dr Uma Dinsmore-Tuli writes, “Tārā has a paler complexion, but she is every bit as fierce. I understand this fierceness to be a strong compassion, a love that has the capacity to bestow deep liberation”.
The siddhi (magical power) that Uma associates with Tārā is “of trust in change as a way to be carried through difficulty”. The root syllable of Tārā’s name, tr, means to take across, and the feeling of her power is that it can carry us over and through challenge, but only if we give ourselves up to it. This is the central revelation of the siddhi of menstrual cycle awareness: that if we honour and respect the forces of change that work within us through the menstrual cycle, then what we learn about this cycle carries us through the challenges of all other cycles of change. Meeting the challenges of our experience of the menstrual cycle supports our capacity to embrace change in all other dimensions of our lives.
Tārā’s siddhi has the capacity to carry us through the mire and confusion of suffering and difficulty to reach the solid ground of wisdom and knowledge. Tārā is also, like Kālī, a great goddess of transformation. She is the first transformation of Kālī, the primary manifestation of the force of change at work. The notion of transformation is central to the spiritualised understanding of the power of the menstrual cycle: for it is through an acceptance and understanding of the rhythms of the our own monthly cycle that we are able to accept the transformative wisdom which each of these experiences has to offer us.
If, however, we do not take the opportunity (or are denied the awareness that makes such acceptance and intimate knowledge possible), then the great gift of cyclical knowledge and its capacity to transform us becomes a curse. Without the siddhi of understanding and acceptance which Tārā offers us, then the greatest female siddhi of them all becomes nothing but a heavy burden. For to encounter menstrual cycles without awareness of the capacity for deep wisdom that resides within them becomes an experience of difficulty and challenge that seems to have no point, a focus of resentment, annoyance, embarrassment and shame.”
It’s in this way that we can use conscious menstruation as a spiritual practice, understanding more of the siddhi of transformation that Tārā can bring. I have been experiencing this for myself for a number of years now. It wasn’t that I was unaware of my menstrual cycle prior to this, in many respects it was my menstrual cycle and PMS that played a central role in bringing me to yoga and waking me up, but that I hadn’t worked with it as a potential practice for spiritual liberation and opportunity to access deeper wisdom.
My menstrual cycle used to be a source of much suffering and misery. Over the first two weeks of my cycle, the follicular stage, during the time between menses and ovulation I would feel great, have lots of energy and feel relatively confident and enthusiastic about life. But then the luteal phase would arrive from post-ovulation to menses and it would be like a light switch being turned off, all of a sudden I would be flung into the darkness of depression, and lose interest and enthusiasm in life.
The closer towards menses the worse I would feel; not only depressed but also anxious, sensitive to criticism, very critical about everything, especially myself, irrationally angry, ‘flying off the handle’ at the smallest things, weepy, bloated and completely uncomfortable in my own skin. It was a really horrible experience that made me loathe the menstrual cycle and its resulting PMS (as my experience was later diagnosed).
It was the depression that brought me to yoga and this took me to Carol Champion, a Guernsey-based nutritionist who helped me to work out the link between the intensity of the depression and my menstrual cycle, a symptom of PMS. While Carol helped me enormously, my ongoing fascination with PMS and my quest to ‘rid myself of it’ took me to Ayurveda and this took me to Uma and onto Code Red by Lisa Lister, and I haven’t looked back since.
What I didn’t know back then, was that our menstrual cycle helps us to know more of the truth of ourselves. As Dr Christiane Northrup writes, “The menstrual cycle is the most basic, earthy cycle we have. Our blood is our connection to the archetypal feminine. The macrocosmic cycles of nature, the waxing and waning, the ebb and flow of the tides and the changes of the seasons, are reflected on a smaller scale in the menstrual cycle of the individual female body. The monthly ripening of an egg and subsequent pregnancy or release of menstrual blood mirror the process of creation as it occurs not only in nature, unconsciously, but in human endeavor. In many cultures, the menstrual cycle has been viewed as sacred.”
Our menstrual cycle can show us when we are living out of alignment with our truth. Me not feeling comfortable within my own skin those last two weeks of my cycle was indicative of my life at that time. I didn’t feel comfortable in my own skin generally because I was living a life that didn’t fit. I was working in a job I hated, I was in denial of an eating disorder, I was smoking cannabis and endless cigarettes and I was drinking far too much wine and giving myself a bloody hard time about all of it, leaving me feeling depressed, anxious and full of hatred for self.
Then yoga came along, quickly followed by healthy eating and Reiki and life changed as I changed my relationship with myself and vice versa. The bouts of depression eased as I discovered more of my heart and started listening as my soul was also allowed expression. The symptoms of PMS eased too, but I kept overlooking the cyclical nature of what it means to be a women and I was constantly trying to ‘heal’ and ‘fix’ the second half of my cycle, because it made me feel ‘darker and edgier’ than the first half.
It wasn’t until much later when I discovered menstruation consciousness as a spiritual practice that I realised that the different stages of the menstrual cycle are not meant to be the same! We women are cyclical in nature, like the moon, we have our own waxing and waning, and the more I connected with the moon, the more I connected with my menstrual cycle and the waxing and waning journey it took me on.
I stopped trying to ‘fix’ my cycle and learned to listen to it instead, to be with it, and appreciate the wisdom it was imparting, the manner in which it was highlighting where I was out of alignment with my truth, or where I was living my life out of balance, selling out on myself, stepping too much into my masculine energy again, doing too much, being too much of, well, everything and overlooking the subtleties of other ways of being, or other interests and passions awaiting discovery if only I might get out of my own way!
This wasn’t to deny then the full range of emotions that I might feel during my cycle, the last two weeks especially, but to better understand, interpret and absolutely allow them. This has been key. Whereas once I turned away from the emotional intensity of the last week of my cycle particularly, now I turn into it, because I know that it is potentially the most informative and transformative moment of the entire cycle.
As Dr Christiance Northrup writes: “Since our culture generally appreciates only what we can understand rationally, many women tend to block at every opportunity the flow of unconscious “lunar” information that comes to them premenstrually or during their menstrual cycle. Lunar information is reflective and intuitive. It comes to us in our dreams, our emotions, and our hungers. It comes under cover of darkness.
When we routinely block the information that is coming to us in the second half of our menstrual cycles, it has no choice but to come back as PMS or menopausal madness, in the same way that our other feelings and bodily symptoms, if ignored, often result in illness.
The luteal phase, from ovulation until the onset of menstruation, is when women are most in tune with their inner knowing and with what isn’t working in their lives.
Studies have shown that women’s dreams are more frequent and often more vivid during the premenstrual and menstrual phases of their cycles. Premenstrually, the “veil” between the worlds of the seen and unseen, the conscious and the unconscious, is much thinner.
We have access to parts of our often unconscious selves that are less available to us at all other times of the month. In fact, it has been shown experimentally that the right hemisphere of the brain—the part associated with intuitive knowing—becomes more active premenstrually, while the left hemisphere becomes less active.
Interestingly enough, communication between the two hemispheres may be increased as well. The premenstrual phase is therefore a time when we have greater access to our magic—our ability to recognize and transform the more difficult and painful areas of our lives.
Premenstrually, we are quite naturally more in tune with what is most meaningful in our lives. We’re more apt to cry—but our tears are always related to something that holds meaning for us. Years of personal and clinical experience have taught me that the painful or uncomfortable issues that arise premenstrually are always real and must be addressed.
I pay attention in this later stage of my cycle. I notice how I have a rush of energy five days or so before menses, like I did the day before my contractions started for my youngest son (my first born was birthed by Caesarean Section prior to contraction due to full grade placenta previa), as if allowing me to tidy up things. Then I notice how my energy wanes, as if it has been sucked from me, so that I do not feel to rush around and instead there is a pull to retreat from the world as I also become more critical of the state of the world I find myself living in.
This is not necessarily an easy time for my partner because I become more critical of everything and my tendencies towards cleanliness of my immediate environment become more pronounced. Fortunately I’m rarely critical to the self anymore and the anger to self has dropped away. The fire inside me still burns strongly in me though at this time, lots of pitta, resulting in less tolerance, less patience and I am more likely to snap far quicker than I might do ordinarily – I might have a ‘sharper’ tongue too, and my temperature rises, resulting in a more unsettled night’s sleep and looser stools.
I also become more opinionated and vocal about issues close to my heart. I feel much more creative too and tend to experience an overwhelming need to write. I can write prolifically during this time too, I’m on my second blog post of the day during this time, for example, having already edited a bit of my book – the enhanced critical eye and pickiness has its benefits as I can edit much more easily, I’m more certain, less wishy washy, it’s a good time for decisions, the words come flow more easily (at least if I am in the zone – my cycle will tell me if I am not!).
In many respects my passion and my fierceness, and the fieriness that underpins this, reminiscent of Tārā and her fierceness, which Uma explains as a strong compassion, a love that sets us free, defines this period of my cycle. Don’t mess with me! I might feel increasingly vulnerable, to the extent that I might rather not have to stand in front of students and teach yoga or Reiki if I have the choice, but I will stand up for what I believe in, and this from a place of compassion and love.
I surprise myself sometimes, because I don’t realise until that time the extent to which I feel passionate about something, such as women’s rights to birth with a partner of choice as revealed itself to me this latter part of cycle, and women’s relationship to menstruation and the need for more women to recognise that menstruation consciousness can be used as a for of spiritual practice, rather than feared through shame, embarrassment or any of the myriad of negative conditioning that we have absorbed from society.
But this is the thing about this stage of our cycle. The more we pay attention, the more we come to know what really makes us who we are, and where we need to be placing our energy and what needs expression and/or healing. The dark moon day, the day before menses, this is a gift, as if the veil between the worlds is lifted, there is always some insight we may receive, transformative potential if we can interpret it, and perhaps it doesn’t matter if we can’t, because it will likely unfold anyway, once we have started to become more open and receptive to it, friendlier then. Pay attention!
Notice the moon cycle too and how aligned or out of aligned your cycle is with this. Everyone’s cycle will have a different duration, those like me who are more pitta orientated will have a more regular cycle that lasts 28-29 days, but someone who is more vata orientated will likely experience an irregular cycle and those kapha orientated will have a slightly longer cycle. It’s the same with bleeding, depending on Ayurvedic constitution, the consistency and length of menses will be different, light and short for vata, initially heavy then lighter, 5 days for pitta and heavier 5-7 days for kapha. You’ll be more prone to weepiness and emotional outbursts if vata, anger and aggressiveness if pitta and lethargy and sleepiness if kapha.
Each phase of the menstrual cycle has a different Ayurvedic quality to it too. The vata phase lasts from approximately day 1-5 (from the first day of bleeding). The kapha phase lasts from the end of bleeding until ovulation (approx. days 5-14) The pitta phase lasts from ovulation until your period starts (days 14-18). This can really help you to understand your dosha, your fault, as you notice how each phase of the cycle affects you from an Ayurvedic perspective. If your pitta is out of balance, as mine was, for example, then you’ll feel excess fire, anger and aggressiveness in the pre-menstrual stage.
When I was paying particular attention to my menstrual cycle in preparation for IVF, I was absolutely delighted when my ovulation (albeit medically created through the use of IVF drugs) coincided with the full moon, and we conceived both our boys from this full moon cycle. There is a natural affinity between the ‘full moon’ and the ‘fullness’ of eggs at ovulation. Studies suggest that more women ovulate at the full moon than they do at the new moon as if proving the relationship between the menstrual cycle and the moon - so important to know this kind of stuff if you are trying to conceive. Even though my cycle is not the 29.5 days of the moon cycle, I tend to bleed on the new moon. I know that I need to pay extra attention if this alignment shifts dramatically.
I could write extensively about the menstrual cycle as you can probably tell, how studies have found that women who work in strip bars and at trucking stops get given more tips when they are ovulating, as our bodies secrete pheromones into the air that increase our sexual attractiveness to others, and how our ‘ripeness’ make us feel more attractive and contented within ourselves and therefore more attractive to others.
I could also write about the impact of fear and ignorance on our menstrual cycles and this siddhi. How women will willingly spend decades of their lives taking synthetic contraceptive pills or using other contraceptive implants that not only reduce their sexual response but can cause long-term health problems (think migraine, breast cancer, susceptibility to stroke, bone density loss etc.) not to mention compromising natural fertility (many realise too late). As Uma says, “these are all desperate choices born out of fears that there are no other options”.
The point is though, that without awareness of the menstrual cycle we run the risk of dismissing the great siddhi that Tārā has to offer us. Tārā is an inspiration and our guide on the complex path of spiritual freedom. One of her cosmic attributes is to save us or free us from the different troubles we have to face in life. She doesn’t help us to destroy these obstacles but to sublimate them and successfully overcome them, gaining greater wisdom in the process.
In other words, Tārā helps us transcend all the inferior and ignoble aspects of our life, helping us to connect with higher aspects of self and live from this elevated perspective. In the process we are not only saved from imminent danger, of lower energies and lives that don’t fit, but she also offers us the possibility of accessing elevated and more aligned levels of spirituality. Furthermore, as the greatest obstacle to overcome is our mind itself, Tārā helps us go beyond the fluctuations and limitations of this, so that we may see ourselves and life more clearly.
As Uma writes, “Thankfully, many women now are lifting ‘the curse’ and embracing conscious menstrual experience as a route to a spiritual wisdom that liberates feminine experience from the limitations of patriarchal cultural expectations. We can use the practice of womb yoga [or Yoni Yoga!] to address ancestral repetitions of suffering and shame around menstruation, and we can use breath, movement and awareness practice to embrace the flow if the blees, to alleviate the physical and emotional pain and suffering that may be associatedwith our experience of menstruation”. She’s right! There’s no turning back once you begin, the path, the star, becomes brighter and we transform into more than we could ever imagine!
*If you are curious to learn more, then I highly recommend reading Code Red, by Lisa Lister, Yoni Shakti by Dr Uma Dinsmore-Tuli and Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom by Dr Christiane Northrup. Also the work of Alexandra Pope and the Red School is valued by others.
Bring Kālī into our lives: the power of change and time
There is no doubt that I lost some of my grounding last week, but I have found the earth again and with that I have felt drawn back to Dr Uma Dinsmore-Tuli’s work and to the Goddess. Not that they went anywhere, just that the calling has been greater this last few days.
I have it in my mind that over lockdown and through the Yoni Yoga classes, I would like to share more on the Daśa Mahāvidyās, the ten great wisdom Goddesses, albeit I hope we might run out of time and lockdown won’t last for ten whole weeks… but one can never be sure! If there’s one thing Covid has taught me, it is to go with the flow and stop trying to make life certain and known!
It’s Kālī who I am especially drawn towards. She is the Queen amongst the wisdom goddesses and contains the whole circle of siddhis, or magical powers, within the reaches of her power. Acquiring a siddhi is a threshold between worldly and transcendental awareness, as a junction between the two and as a passing through, it is a kind of initiation.
Uma proposes that a women may encounter eight female siddhis in her life including:
· The onset of menstruation at menarche
· Menstrual cycles
· Female orgasm
· Pregnancy
· Miscarriage
· Labour and birth
· Lactation
· Menopause
Because the physical siddhis are naturally arising physical experiences, it is important to understand the difference between merely experiencing their physiological aspects as bodily functions, and recognising these experiences as potential siddhis. It is conscious recognition that transforms the physiological and physical experience into a siddhi.
As Dr Christiane Northrup writes, “Unconscious biological instinct and biological instinct that is honed and refined by consciousness and choice are two different things”. Thus if women are able to relate to their emotional, physical and physiological experience in any of the above events as siddhis, or as sources of insight, wisdom and opportunities for spiritual expansion, then they will need to approach them with conscious awareness.
This leads me to Kālī, the greatest of all powers, whose powers of transformation, liberation and destruction both contain and permeate the whole of life. The literal meaning of Kālī is time and she teaches us that time is an inescapable power. As Uma writes:
“Kālī is also time and change from the perspective of cyclical knowledge; for the way that time is measured out in women’s lives is through the repetition of cycles, each one the same yet different from those before and afterwards. When we place this powerful goddess as the protective entity around the cycles of our lives, we embrace the inevitability of chance as a potential for great wisdom and understanding. Kālī in her closeness to death and darkness, shows us the necessity for self-acceptance and surrender. Her mahā-siddhi, or great power, is the power that comes with acceptance of change, and the willingness to let go in order to grow.”
I feel that this is pertinent for us all now. This is a great time for change and for letting go. We were given the opportunity here in Guernsey during the lockdown in 2020 and the opportunity has come again. I really do feel that there is a significant power around us right now, a true opportunity for wisdom, insight, spiritual growth and raising of consciousness, if we are able to surrender into all that life is giving us rather than turning away from it.
As a true pitta kapha, I have always struggled to let go of things, of past experiences and of believing that things have to be a certain way. Perhaps it’s for this reason that I have been drawn to Kālī these last few days, because I know that this is absolutely a time of change, of letting go of the picture we have in our heads of how we think it should be, and opening ourselves up to something that has yet to be lived and experienced.
Uma continues, “At its most profound level, Kālī’s siddhi empowers us to drop the limitations of who we think we are in order to encounter the limitless potential of what we can become. Kālī invites us to surrender completely any ideas that come from a desire to fix or define our sense of identity. To access the unlimited powers of her siddhi requires that we allow a part of us to die, the part that most strenuously asserts that it is the very source of our identity: our idea of who we are”.
The idea of identity is a challenging one for us women, because the notion of what it is to be a woman have been manipulated and changed by patriarchy. I joined a series of lectures on goddess led by a high priestess of Glastonbury and I was amazed to see the way in which the depiction of women changed when patriarchy came in. Prior to patriarchy, images of women were drawn and carved with full breasts, hips and thighs and a soft belly – women were powerful for they created new life and these child-bearing aspects of her were revered and celebrated. Many of the images did not show her face, for this was not deemed important.
Then patriarchy came in and the image of women changed. Now she was sexualised with pert breasts, now covered, seductively, and longer thinner limbs, a face and hair, a clothed body with none of the fullness that was evident in the early goddesses. Her power was taken away. The maiden was objectified by men, menstruation was seen as dirty and birth kept hidden, the mother was no longer revered for bringing new life into this world. The wise crone was no longer celebrated either, her wisdom lost.
Even now, we expand a huge amount of energy on attempting to fight off the signs of ageing. Still society celebrates the body and face of the maiden. Women have a hard time transitioning from maiden to mother, not least because of the demands on, and changes to her body, coupled with the overwhelming reality of life lived with a new baby and the constant sleep deprivation and need for lactation, but because of the loss of identity living as we do in a society that still only values the maiden and her youthful beauty.
As Uma writes, “Whilst it is deeply frightening to let go of the idea that we can always appear to be a certain way, with the passage of time it is absolutely inevitable that Kālī’s power needs to be faced. Such is her power, that if we choose not to engage with its effects through conscious acceptance and willingness to surrender, it will get to us in the end through suffering, grief, bitterness and regret. In relation to the cycles of a woman’s life, what Kali siddhi offers us is the immense power to recognise that the only constant is change itself. In our youth, our menstrual cycle teaches us this lesson over and over again, and the sooner we wake up to what we are to learn, the sooner we are able to embrace our limitless power and potential to live life in freedom”.
It’s fascinating to me, because the menstrual cycle prepares us for the changes ahead, and for what it means to be a cyclical woman living in touch with our cyclical nature, if we choose. We are the micro of the macro and we wax and wane as the moon does too. My boys have a bonkers barometer for me, I’m more bonkers at certain parts of the moon cycle apparently! I’m no doubt more bonkers at certain parts of my own cycle too, and in the moments when I am encouraged to transition from one way of being to another, because it is always messy!
My yoga teacher always says that yoga is teaching us to die well. By that she means that our practice can give us the opportunity to cultivate the ability to let go with ease and grace. Our every practice is an opportunity for this. I clung to my vinyasa practice for many years, and the transition, the letting go, to something kinder and gentler and compassionate, more aligned with who I wanted to be, was tricky for me. My identity was tied up in my yoga practice and on what I felt it was giving me physically.
But the process taught me to trust the practice, that this takes us from one way of being to another if we allow it. But more often than not, we cling on through fear of something, of having to go deeper often, of having to be honest with ourselves to the extent that we can no longer ignore that inner voice that knows that there is more to us than we are allowing, another identity if we can only get out of our own way and die to the world as we know it.
Life supports this process too if we allow it. Those shifts from one way of being to another, of maiden to motherhood and on to wise crone, from menstruation to menopause. And those cycles from one identity to another, of one way of expressing ourselves in the world to another. But all of this with conscious awareness, of being open to life as it unfolds moment to moment.
I feel that lockdown here in Guernsey, the virus then, the corona-virus (corona = crown) is bringing with it an opportunity for significant change, of spiritual growth and a shift in individual and collective consciousness. Not only is the wheel turning again as we move into Imbolc and the stirrings of spring, but there is a turning into something wiser and deeper and more authentic and real if we allow it.
This is a time of conscious acceptance and surrendering, of letting go of who we think we are, and who we think we have been, to become the person we are now meant to be instead. We might not know what that means and how that looks, but we can take comfort in knowing that it will only ever be for our highest good.
If this resonates with you on any level, then call Kālī into your life, but be prepared. She is a force to be reckoned with, a power like no other. She is heavy so that the weight of her power can spiral out to influence the movement of every cycle. She is also the power of time and change, these being the only true constants. So we embrace all of this; we are like stars in the night sky that appear to be fixed but are in fact wheeling around in a constant heavenly dance of shifts and change.
In our practice, we encourage change. We settle into the watery element of the pelvis, spiralling and moving, as we go with the flow in the outer world too. We find our roots, that which holds us steady, and we find our heart too, and open this to the world as if the one and only thing we might ever do with our one life is take the risk and love and create, over and over again.
Happy Midsummer!
Happy midsummer!
I was supposed to be celebrating at Stonehenge today, but Covid put an end to that, for all of us, including the Druids who are the ancient Celts, who hold ceremony at Stonehenge at the summer and winter solstices. However, it rained, so we wouldn’t have seen sunrise anyway, not in Guernsey nor at Stonehenge, so this eased the moment somewhat and does mean I got a little more sleep last night than I was anticipating even a few weeks ago.
Fortunately, I glimpsed some of sunrise earlier this week, from Les Trepieds, which appears to be aligned with the summer solstice, this after seeing the mist that reminded me of the mists of Avalon! This has a rich wiccan past although it was referenced in relation to the witch trials and persecution so has a sad history too. It’s not somewhere I have spent much time, favouring the fairy cave instead, there’s something about its energy. However I felt it peaceful at 5am, with the sound of the birds and the sea. It took me back to ancient times perhaps.
I did visit the fairy cave that same early morning too, and the serious energy was quite in contrast to the energy of Les Trepieds. You have to be mindful with the fairy cave, respectful to the guardians, I have learned this over time. It is the same at La Varde, the pigeons will watch you anyhow, these are the guardians in time manifest, and they hold the secrets that they might slowly reveal to us if we respect this sacred goddess energy – I get a little uptight if I hear that people are messing with the energy. These are not summer solstice sites, at least that’s my experience.
As a family, we visited La Rocque Balan, to feel the midsummer eve energy, as there is reference to it having been a place of midsummer eve celebration in times gone by. The sun was lost behind clouds and there was a small party of ladies enjoying a picnic nestled in the rocks and a friend appeared to be holding ceremony with another friend by the cup marks at the summit – there are many theories as to what they were for, and geological explanations too; always a mystery where ancient sites of ceremony and worship are concerned.
In my mind I see a stone circle just below the main rocks, I’m always drawn here, there’s something about the energy, and Elijah was feeling it too. I was dowsing and he took the pendulum from me, the first time he has ever done that and wanted to learn how to do it himself and how to find the ‘energy focus’. As with everything, this is open to interpretation, which is perhaps the reason I love exploring these ancient sites, because we will never know, only in our hearts and third eyes, so there we can embrace all that is mysterious about this wonderful world of energy and moon/sun/star alignment.
I watched a lecture this week by Heather Sebire who used to work with my dad here on Guernsey, but who now manages Stonehenge, quite amazing! It was fascinating to learn more of this ancient site, which has long held sway over the archaeologist, the mystic, the astronomer and the poet and still evokes such a wide range of feeling and thought. I’m still buying into the idea that Stonehenge was built by the Druids, and I shall never forget spending sunrise here as part of my 40th celebrations, and watching the Druids and hearing the drumming and just blissing out on the Pagan energy, let alone the excitement at touching the stones.
I love touching stones and finding messages in them. Energetically I can sometimes feel things, we spent time during IVF treatment at Salisbury cathedral, I just felt this need to rest my head and hands against some of those old stones infused with the energy of prayer and connection to God, even if it is not a God that I worship. So too, to find hand positions in ancient rocks, here on Guernsey there are some in La Varde and the fairy cave, and probably elsewhere but these places are where I tend to spend the most time, and with La Gran’ Mère outside St Martin’s Church, who has definitely been changed, to transform her from goddess to man and yet the breasts give the game away!
I love not only the mystery of these sites but the fact that I might place my hands where hands were placed thousands of years ago, by those ancestors whose blood may run through mine, if you buy into this, and the manner in which we are drawn to that which we once were, as if we are remembering. Who knows. Another mystery, a reminder that we sometimes just don’t know, which reminds me of this beautiful poem I found the other day by Mary Oliver called ‘Angels’:
“You might see an angel anytime
and anywhere. Of course you have
to open your eyes to a kind of
second level, but it’s not really
hard. The whole business of
what’s reality and what isn’t has
never been solved and probably
never will be. So I don’t care to
be too definite about anything.
I have a lot of edges called Perhaps
and almost nothing you can call
Certainty. For myself, but not
for other people. That’s a place
you just can’t get into, not
entirely anyway, other people’s
heads.
I’ll just leave you with this.
I don’t care how many angels can
dance on the head of a pin. It’s
enough to know that for some people
they exist, and that they dance. “
I love too finding imagery in the rocks, seeing figures, faces, signs, these are all messengers, also open to interpretation. I’m always hopeful there may be some evidence of Ogham, the ancient Celtic tree alphabet, which appears on roughly 400 stones which have been discovered thus far, 360 of which are in Ireland and the rest scattered around Wales, Scotland, England and the Isle of Man. It might well be an excuse to visit Ireland and all the Celtic sites there, but I see perhaps my own language in the stones here; a re-membering!
So happy midsummer to you all (there were two longest days this year, that’s unusual!), and happy new moon solar eclipse too. May more of the mystery reveal itself to you, may you tread your path on the edge, where the magic happens, on the margins, not limited by the perceived certainty of definition, dancing with the angels, always dancing with the angels, and stepping closer and closer to who you really are on the inside. The descent into the darkness will support this, so let’s descend gently and enjoy all that the shifting seasons and planets may bring.
Love Emma x
Power and the deep feminine
That was most definitely a potent full moon and I am only now clearer about what it was ushering in. There was most definitely a play on power, and you might have felt that in your own lives too.
I definitely felt a sense of powerlessness with the way that life is currently unfolding and it is only now I recognise the reason for the kidney and liver pain that has accompanied this. The kidneys because of deep rooted fear of not being able to touch or to use holistic therapies to heal (as these rely so heavily on human touch). I feel as if ancestral and past life wounds were touched, around Wicca and the deep memory of the persecution of healers (the witch hysteria during the mid 1400s ).
There was anger in this too, then, for this Wiccan history, and also for the collateral damage of trying to protect the vulnerable from Covid-19 and yet creating so much more suffering and vulnerability in the process. There is a thin line and I don’t envy anyone having to manage this, but I do feel as if a perspective shift is required. The state has done such a good job in conditioning (and controlling) everyone to (through) fear, that now it has a huge job on its hands to condition everyone that life is again safe to be lived.
There is a fear that for those of us who teach yoga or in some way offer our hand to heal, will not be able to do so, in the flesh, for a long time to come. Yet I know that in every ending is a new beginning and I take comfort in this. I am grateful that yoga and Reiki can be shared distantly, albeit it is not the same as physical touch, but at least there is the option. Plus I know that healing can come in so many ways, and I recognise in my own life how this pause, and this space, has revealed other things to me.
I keep returning to Rebecca Campbell’s marvellous quote about all this, well about letting go really, which is what this is all about, and how the power comes into it too, because I have a feeling that this is where it’s at really, coming to understand the nature of power, beyond labels and this idea of being someone. There has been so much emphasis these last few years for women, especially within yoga, to step into their power, and yet I can’t help thinking that we have been attempting to do so while still ignoring the deep feminine.
“In order for the new to arrive, we must first allow the old to shatter. Sometimes this happens on its own. And sometimes it requires that we do the smashing. To tear apart what we’ve built because things have changed, including you. To admit that while it once was aligned, now it no longer is. This shattering requires both courage and faith. Courage to let go and faith that the pieces will come back together again in a way that was more aligned than it was before” Rebecca Campbell
I’m not sure that the deep feminine, the inner witch, the healer, the carer, the mother, the grandmother, the wisdom keeper, I don’t know that she needed to be any more than what she was. She didn’t need to be on a pedestal, or splashed across social media, nor rushing around the world sharing her wisdom. She was contented to live it and share it with those who sought her, not because she was ‘someone’, but because she was her-self. There was a sacredness to her life and to her offerings too. There was the power, in the sacredness of it all.
I have found the break form social media thus far extremely liberating, empowering. I don’t miss it. It’s refreshing not knowing how others are living, and not concerning myself with it. There is less external noise and more time to be with those who matter the most. It has also freed me in my teaching, to offer what I love and what I have learned over all these years of studying the self, with those who most value it, there is (for me at least and I hope this doesn’t sound arrogant as that is not as it is intended) a deeper sense of the sacred. This too came through with the moon.
There is a re-alignment of power at play and for us women this means that yet more ideas of what this might mean need to drop away. We are entering a new paradigm and the idea of what it means to ‘step into our power’ also needs to change. The joy is that life will create this shift, the universe, the moon, the stars and the planets, they will all play their role to ensure that we have the opportunity to listen.
We might not heed the call, we might not make the space, we might grip on so tightly to how we think it should be, that we don’t hear the whisperings of another way. But the signs will be there anyway, the illness, aches, pains, tensions, the dodgy skin, the irregular period, the people, birds, animals and insects that cross our path, they are all message keepers, if we pay attention.
It’s not easy to pay attention though. Sometimes when working with my teacher, she is asking me to be so attentive that I find it difficult because I have to be very still and very present, and very much inside myself. Yet I know that if I can stay with it, then I will touch something that I cannot touch when life is lived externally, or busy, or noisy. The practice comes in being present and attentive, and this is tricky beyond the yoga mat when there is so much distraction.
Yet I have feeling that this is the power of the deep feminine. It is not about what we might create or produce in the external world (that’s the illusion, the trap), but how life is lived in relation to the self. That’s not so easy to teach, and not so easy to explain, because we all have that wisdom, and it is for us to reveal it to ourselves, given the right conditions.
As I am writing this, and as I searched for the above quote to share with you, I came across this other one, and feel like leaping with joy because while I have read it many times before, I feel as if it is only now I have an embodied sense of it being my truth too. Which means it is possibly yours too. This is where the moon has been taking us. This is the power of the deep feminine and it is not at all what others might have us believe, those making the noise and yet still living from a masculine perspective of results and external adoration.
“The deep Feminine, the mystery of consciousness, She who is life, is longing for our transformation as much as we are. She holds back, allowing us free reign to choose, nudging us occasionally with synchronicities, illness, births and deaths… But when we make space for Her, she rushes into all the gaps, engulfing us with her desire for life and expression. This is what She longs for, this is what we are for: experiencing the Feminine through ourselves. We simply need to slow down, and find where to put our conscious attention. And it is this, this willingness to look again, this willingness to put consciousness onto our places of unconscious, to express what we have always avoided, which starts the process of unblocking, so that She may flow through.” Lucy Pearce
All is well. That we must remember. Power is power is power. Knowing the self is power. Healing the self is power. Retreating into the self is power. Finding courage, that is power. Being still is also power. There are so many ways that we can embrace our power without losing ourselves in the power of it, of trying to be anything other than what we already are, and this, this is the key to true power - and it is found in love, and it is found in surrender, and it is found in vulnerability and it is found in being deeply attentive.
Love Emma x
The Blessings in the Curse
Now I’ve found my flow within this new reality that we find ourselves in, I have to admit that I am loving it. I appreciate that people are dying and are losing their jobs and others are unwell and separated from their families, yet I am grateful for this opportunity to shift how we are living and align to something slower paced instead.
In many respects I have been quite lucky as our lives were already lived relatively simply. I wasn’t going to an office and I wasn’t working full time, so being at home with the boys has not been a shock to my system as it would understandably have been for others – I am in awe at those attempting to work full time from home and school children all at the same time. It helps too that my parents are on hand by FaceTime to help with Elijah’s learning, and I have been grateful for their support.
But more than that, over the years of practising yoga, aspects of how my life used to be lived have dropped away, I don’t go out for dinner, or socialise with the girls beyond meeting for a sea swim, for example. I don’t go to the hairdresser regularly, or have my nails done. I don’t go shopping for clothes or for anything else beyond food if I can help it! I don’t go to the cinema or to the gym. I don’t really do very much when I think about it, beyond yoga, writing, cycling, going to the beach, and being with the children!
Of course there are things I miss, but the missing doesn’t feel as great as it did at the beginning, as I have let go a little of those attachments too. No doubt there will be more to let go of as this lockdown continues, but I’ve started to recognise more of the positives than the negatives and long may this continue! To be honest I have felt much more gratitude for all I have in my life, now, than I ever did previously and this in itself has been a positive, as are these:
· There is less rushing and for this I am eternally grateful! I have known for a while that I needed to slow my life down and stop with the rushing, especially rushing the children in and out of the door, and lockdown has achieved this for me. We no longer need to rush and life is so much easier!
· Time has taken on a whole new meaning. Aside from being on time for the yoga classes that I have scheduled, and the FaceTime sessions with my parents for Elijah’s home schooling, there is no need to be on time for anything else because we have no plans, we are able to just literally flow with where the energy takes us and that is extremely liberating.
· This means that we are able to drop more into the notion of there being no time or space, as we learn in Reiki Level Two, and I feel that this lockdown has allowed a greater lived sense of that. Time and space seems less of an obstacle as we connect over the internet regardless of space and time – one of my friends, Lottie, has been able to join some of the Facebook Live sessions with us from Australia, which is just wonderful.
· There has been greater connecting with people who are on my wave length, who I hadn’t had the opportunity to connect with previously. It’s as if a whole new world has opened up bringing with it lovely new connections. There’s also been a deepening in established connections, which has been wonderful too.
· The reduction in noise from the roads and the skies is a true joy and I can hear the bird song much clearer than previously and I’m slowly learning to recognise which bird song comes from which bird type!
· I also feel that I can see more clearly too, without all the traffic, and I actually stopped my bike the other day, when I was out cycling, to stare at the wonder which was someone else’s garden full of beautiful flowers blossoming.
· I feel like I can breathe more easily too, especially when I am out on my bike, the air just feels cleaner, like its filled with more prana, perhaps because it is spring and nature is abundant in energy.
· At times it feels as if the flowers on the hedgerows and cliffs and in the gardens are from another world as they look so stunning and so vibrant, with their bright colours, reminding me that nature is abundant in her beauty and is not scared to share with it others, so that we too can delight in it.
· Being more aware of what I am buying, and trying to make as many snacks as I can as well as cooking from scratch twice a day and having the time to be a little more adventurous than I might be normally.
· The opportunity to write - not least a little more time without the regular trips backwards and forwards to the school each day, but also the creative impulse, as if the time and the space and the extra yoga lessons that I have taken with my teacher have allowed me the opportunity to drop deeper into the creative.
· Extra yoga lessons with my teacher have been a joy as both of our schedules have eased and E is at home to help with the children.
· The time spent as a family. We were lucky as our lives allowed us a lot of family time previously, but now we have even more time together, and while this certainly brings with it its challenges (how can it not!), it has also been wonderful to be more involved in Elijah’s education, and witness more fully the mania of Eben!
· This has been another benefit, watching the children coming into their own, in their own ways. Elijah has never passionate about school and he is enjoying not having the pressure of that and he’s now stopped counting down to the weekend! He has enjoyed learning from home, and I have enjoyed being more involved in his learning so that we can celebrate his achievements together.
· While Eben has been a challenge at times because he just doesn’t understand the reason he can’t see my parents, and he misses his friends and pre-school, it has been lovely to see him thriving and wilding himself even more than usual.
· Watching the boys’ relationship develop. They are forced together for most of the day and they have thrived on this, playing in a way they have never played previously, and we are laughing more together as a family because of this. We’ve been grateful for the opportunity to walk a dog for another family, we love this dog and she has brought much joy to us as a family.
· This is the other thing, this wilding. The boys have always been a little wild and E and I too really, but now we can truly embrace this aspect of self, getting out into nature, wearing the same clothes more than once, and embracing the dirt!
· I’ve stopped being so obsessive about the cleanliness of the house. This is a big one for me as I am a bit OCD with cleaning as those who know me will agree, but I’ve let this go a little too, as I have re-prioritised my time, I’d rather be writing or playing outside with the boys than cleaning for the sake of it, hoorah for that!
· Creating a Reiki community, which is something I have always wanted to do but never had the time nor the idea of how I might make this happen. But it has happened all by itself and I look forward to the weekly Tuesday evening sessions so that we can connect through Zoom.
· Creating an online yoga community has been wonderful too, to stay connected and share yoga with others during this tricky time felt by many, especially those juggling a working schedule and home schooling children. It is a joy for me to teach yoga and I am grateful that I have been able to continue to do this and to share my passion to help and support others as yoga has helped and supported me enormously over the years and continues to do so.
· A depending connection to the Earth and to her ancient wisdom. I have even started planting seeds to attempt to grow medicinal herbs, something that has been on my mind for a while now, and I am hoping that they will be kind and grow for me and for me to share with you. A whole new world potentially awaits, let us see.
· Getting out running. I’m not a runner, I prefer swimming and cycling, but running has helped me to process my thoughts and all that is happening, it has given me the space to think about the book I am writing, it has helped me to notice the beauty of nature around me and to clear my head and enjoy some solitude away from the family.
· Having to face my long-held fear of IT and learning how to do online videos for myself, let alone sending out newsletters and doing minor updates to the website. It has been a teeny bit empowering and I hope I can continue to build on it. I am very grateful to Katie Bisson, my brother and Nicky Jenkins who have all helped in the background.
· I have had to face my fear of seeing myself on the screen! I employed Steph to film the videos on my website professionally, and so I have never watched them as she kindly did all the editing without needing my input, so I have avoided thus far seeing myself on them. However with Facebook Live and Zoom I get to see myself on the screen as they are recording and I have to admit that really it is no big deal, I wonder what all the fuss was about!
· I have had to look a little at my fear of my family getting ill or dying. I suspect I am still very much in denial about this as I comfort myself very quickly with thoughts of karma and our souls having their own journey. It’s a fear that I will one day have to overcome, but I’m hoping that now is not that time.
· I’m extremely grateful for my family and for my home, and for the land on which we live, and this beautiful Island on which I was born and the wonderful community we have. We are truly blessed.
· While it might sound as if it is all about me if my ramblings above are anything to go by, It is extremely humbling to recognise those who are deemed essential workers and those who are not. As a yoga teacher and Reiki practitioner, I am not deemed an essential worker, and nor would I have been if I had continued to work as a company secretary in the finance industry. There is a humility that accompanies this and it is my hope that greater respect is given for those key workers post-Covid, the ones who ensure that there is minimal disruption to the fundamentals of our ability to live, from those working at the docks, to those filling the shelves, from those caring for the elderly to those working in hospitals. Let us not forget.
· What I am loving the most is that this period is unprecedented, there is no guideline, no societal expectation on how we as a society or individually should behave or feel. I doubt there is a business model that can help guide businesses through this time with any certainty, we are all having to find a new way. This is extremely liberating not only in the moment, but also for the future of our society. We each have our own role to play in this, as part of the collective, to determine the kind of life we want to live post-Covid.
· My soul feels more at ease, it enjoys this gentler rhythm, the time to observe my breath, to feel a part of nature, and to be in the flow of it – helped enormously because it is spring time.
There are many other benefits too, in the wider world:
· Councils in the UK have been told to house homeless people, some are now even being housed at Heathrow.
· The population has renewed respect for health workers and those on the front line.
· Around the world, Seismologists are observing a lot less ambient seismic noise – meaning the vibrations generated by cars, trains, buses and people going about their daily lives has decreased. This means that the Earth’s upper crust is moving a little less and overall the Earth is currently a much quieter place to live than it was.
· There has already been a noticeable decrease in air pollution in some of the world’s most polluted cities.
· I read that even the Ganges is looking a little bit cleaner!
· People are coming together and helping their communities and especially the vulnerable within them.
· People are connecting across the internet, there is a sense of global solidarity.
I appreciate that there are many suffering because of fear about poor health and losing those they love, others fearful for the loss of the life they had previously enjoyed as more are made redundant or otherwise lose their jobs. Yet I know that every burden carries with it a blessing, it is the natural lore. So while it might feel chaotic and mad, once the turmoil has eased, the bigger picture will become much clearer.
We each have the opportunity now to re-assess our priorities and to really live and embody them, not just think about them, and then put the list back into the drawer until we have more time in our lives. That time is now. If ever there was a time. It might still feel crazy and messy, but every ending feels this way, and we should take comfort in the thought of the peaceful and more aligned new beginnings ahead, we just have to trust and keep letting go into the flow.
I hope that this time is kind to you and that you are able to be kind to yourself too. If ever there was a time for kindness and compassion then it is also now. Every now. But especially this now.
Lots of love xxx